Asperger's is now merged with autism as "autism spectrum disorder." As for "gender identity disorder":

It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender. But many activists believe the condition isn’t a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with “gender dysphoria,” which means emotional distress over one’s gender.

Critics say it will medicalize kids’ who have normal tantrums. Supporters say it will address concerns about too many kids being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with powerful psychiatric drugs.

It's really about recognizing that some things (such as Asperger's and autism) don't fit into the neat categories we made up for them before. Some other "disorders" are not disordered. And that "cute" kid you dump at school is just practicing to be a serial killer.

"It's also about ineffective female teachers not being able to handle boys outside their myopic, little, box."

Or perhaps it's about parents not knowing how--or not having the spine--to discipline their children and teach them how to behave in public and in interacting with other people, so teachers don't have to "handle" them when they arrive in the classroom.

Robert Cook, it's both. But people like Edison, Hemingway, etc. would have been put on Ritalin today. Boys are a challenge, even many who come from good homes. They can't just sit for hours like girls. They learn differently but in schools where 90% of the teachers are women, normal boys are sedated.

Well, gee. I'll make sure that I let my Asperger's step son know that his condition is just a bunch of bull shit. Guess the little bastards just been pulling everyone's leg since age 3!

Don't think that is what is going on, with rolling Aspies into ASD. My understanding is that full blown autism tends to be more debilitating than Asperger's. I think that the problem though is throwing a lot of stuff that is not as debilitating as either in with both of them, in order for the group disability to appear much more prevalent, and to get public support for those not as severely affected or disabled.

Clearly there are no objective standards. The natural order least of all. Any labels are discriminatory and assume a superior knowledge which cannot be justified. Any suggestions of fitness are discriminatory and presume a superior outcome.

So, this is how dysfunction engenders progressive corruption which unchallenged leads to conclusive corruption. A society then either collapses as democratic leverage is exploited to enforce confusion or is overrun by people with a superior grasp of reality.

This is the second time I will "enjoy" witnessing the end of a civilization suffering subversion from within.

A few years back, someone analyzed the numbers and found that if you added up autism (as defined then) and retardation cases, the incidents have been constant for decades.

My son has borderline Asperger's and the autism folks were extremely aggressive at including him in their world. One reason is clearly money, the other, I suspect, is an attempt to normalize their own children.

Honestly, if you want to politicize who believes in meds for children, go ahead but it keeps you far from the kernel of the issue, in case you are interested.

In my dealings with the "psychotherapy community" (now just as bad as the "psychiatric community") and the psychiatry community, I have encountered both Rep and Dem therapists, if it is even sensical to present that like that. It just makes no difference at all. If they reach for the drugs with kids they are stupid, brainwashed, or corrupt.

In any event, what we have is a lot of delusion, almost on a mass scale. There is no critical thinking of anything out, at all.

"It's really about recognizing that some things (such as Asperger's and autism) don't fit into the neat categories we made up for them before."

The timing is amusing because I was talking to a student last week about her interests in research. She is interested in pediatric neurology. She mentioned epilepsy as an interest. I encouraged her to think about autism and Asberger's since the research is going to be a big deal the next 30 years with a real possibility of successful treatment. I sent her some references on the role of oxytocin and vasopressin and their role in experimental treatment.

Research Center for Child Mental Development, University of Fukui, Eiheiji,Fukui, 910-1193, Japan. hirotaka@u-fukui.ac.jp.

ABSTRACT:BACKGROUND: Patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) exhibit core autistic symptoms including social impairments from early childhood and mostlyshow secondary disabilities such as irritability and aggressive behavior based oncore symptoms. However, there are still no radical treatments of socialimpairments in these patients. Oxytocin has been reported to play important rolesin multiple social behaviors dependent on social recognition, and has beenexpected as one of the effective treatments of social impairments of patientswith ASDs.CASE PRESENTATION: We present a case of a 16-year-old girl with autistic disorderwho treated by long-term administration of oxytocin nasal spray. Her autisticsymptoms were successfully treated by two month administration; the girl's socialinteractions and social communication began to improve without adverse effects.Her irritability and aggressive behavior also improved dramatically with markeddecreases in aberrant behavior checklist scores from 69 to 7.CONCLUSION: This case is the first to illustrate long-term administration ofoxytocin nasal spray in the targeted treatment of social impairments in a female with autistic disorder. This case suggests that long-term nasal oxytocin spray ispromising and well-tolerated for treatment of social impairments of patients withASDs.

George Carlin had a routine about how the "old" names for things were short and to the point, while the "new names" for things are longer and less accurate. So, he said, "shell shock" became "combat fatigue" which became "Post-traumatic stress disorder".

And "brat" has become "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder". And I guarantee that the new "treatment" is a whole lot less effective than the spankings that I got - and most certainly deserved - fifty years ago.

"Gender identity disorder" - true "transexuality" is a mental illness. "Transgender" activist hate that formulation, but it's true. It's a mental condition which is not right.

Which is not to say that gender dysphoria is a delusional state, or that the condition can be "cured" by fixing underlying trauma. It's almost certainly a result of neurological miswiring, and is as physically real as the neurochemical malfunctions that cause bipolar disorder.

The problem is that "transgendered activists" have all experienced severe pressure to "normalize" and conform to external gender, and hadd their desire to change gender stigmatized. They want their desired gender identities affirmed and accepted without resistance, and they see any terminology such as "disorder" as stigmatizing.

"Gender identity disorder" - true "transexuality" is a mental illness. "Transgender" activist hate that formulation, but it's true. It's a mental condition which is not right.

Which is not to say that gender dysphoria is a delusional state, or that the condition can be "cured" by fixing underlying trauma. It's almost certainly a result of neurological miswiring, and is as physically real as the neurochemical malfunctions that cause bipolar disorder.

The problem is that "transgendered activists" have all experienced severe pressure to "normalize" and conform to external gender, and hadd their desire to change gender stigmatized. They want their desired gender identities affirmed and accepted without resistance, and they see any terminology such as "disorder" as stigmatizing.

The DSM was created to counter the criticism that psychiatry was obviously not based on science because studies showed that different psychiatrists would often come up with different diagnoses for the same person.

So, the DSM provides some clarity as to what each diagnosis means, and thus reduces (although it can't entirely eliminate) this problem.

BUT if the DSM itself is bunk, then we're back to the basic question: Is psychiatry actually based on science?

Where this really matters is at the margins. That is, someone who's obviously delusional or otherwise incapacitated due to mental illness clearly needs something, and psych drugs are often a very effective "something."

But it gets murkier when one gets into stuff like "autistic spectrum" (not to mention ADD!) as the milder end of the spectrum begins to look more like a socially unpopular personality type than a mental disorder.

At some point, one must question whether the illness model of mental illness is literally true, or whether it's sometimes just a metaphor. Do people with mental illnesses truly have diseases?

It's become dogma to assume that mental illnesses are "brain diseases," caused by chemical imbalances, etc. And since consciousness presumably resides in the brain, it's hardly surprsing that those with bizarre thought processes have different brain chemistries than those without. BUT, which way does the causation flow? Could it be that the bizarre thought processes cause the different brain chemistry and not the reverse?

In any case, at some level, a democratic society should retain some suspicion of psychiatry. Psyschiatry is a healing/helping profession but it is also a type of social control (i.e., citizens who do not behave "correctly" can be drugged against their will, or even locked up).

People with Gender identity disorder are so afraid of stigma that they will ignore that there is something off with how they are wired, just like me as someone with high functioning autism. They confuse how society thinks gender roles should be and how they should act with their actual gender, the one they were born as. There is noting wrong with masculine women and there is nothing wring with feminine men but they are still the gender they are born as. They should be studied in an attempt to understand how they are mis-wired